Locavores[7]. The 100-Mile Diet[8]. The Omnivore’s Dilemma[9]. Local is the new organic, and with good reason. Most food travels thousands of miles, at a tremendous cost to our precious resources, just to land on your plate. Eating locally is better for the environment. But it may also be better for your health (what? better than organic?).

Cookthinker[10] blog tried out the 100-mile diet recently. This is their photo.

From the 100-Mile Diet authors’ page:

“When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles—call it ‘the SUV diet.’ On the first day of spring, 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon (bios)[11] chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.” – The 100-Mile Diet[8]

Eating locally – which necessarily means seasonally – is certainly what our ancestors did. These days, Americans wolf down upwards of 4,000 calories a day[12] from refined grain, factory-raised meat and heavily-treated dairy – with little regard for how the food was grown, how it will affect your health, and what it’s doing to the planet. We have Food Processing magazine. Ridiculous processed and refined food “products”[13]. And let’s not forget about Cheese Food[14]. What we don’t have is sustainable agriculture, a humane food production system, or a healthy population. You know, the little things.

The locavore movement is spreading beyond its Berkeley bubble. (Even Google[15] has gotten with the program and serves its employees free lunches comprised of local delicacies and garden vegetables.)